Shueisha is Crazy if....

They are crazy if they think shutting down raw-paradise will put a damper on manga sharing...They should ask the music industry how that turned out for them. I always thought Raw-paradise was kinda dumb for watermarking their raws which is how shueisha was able to trace the raws distribution back to them. It is still a big news as RP was one the best(if not the best) raw provider out there.

Still manga scanlation and translation will continue stronger than ever and i have no doubt that RP will be back(under a different name of course).

with the internet, free sampling is going way up and it's a good thing for users. the industry is just preventing people who won't buy anyway from checking out their stuff. a waste of energy. if it wasn't for online scanlations, i would've never found FMA and i would've never bought the manga as a result.

Shueisha didn't do anything. That faggot redirected his site on his own to Shueisha's page after scanlator groups decided not to use his watermark raped raws anymore...

He only used WSJ latest announcement to finish up raw-paradise, but it's just an excuse... He could have done that way before...

In the newest issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, the Weekly Shonen Jump editorial department has finally addressed the issue of scanlations by writing a heartfelt letter begging fans to stop scanning their work. Here is a translation thanks to cmertb

To all our readers -

There are now many people unjustly posting copies of manga on the internet. These unjust copies are inconsistent with mangakas' feelings. They are also distorting the authors' intentions of "I want the work to be read this way". The actions of posting these unjust copies on the net, into which the mangakas have poured their hearts, are not only hurting mangakas in real life but are also against the law, even if done in a light-hearted manner. Every time we discover such "unjust copies", we talk to the mangaka and consider every possible countermeasure. But the number of inconsiderate people is great, and at present we cannot deal with all of them. We have a request for all our readers. The unjust internet copies are deeply hurting the manga culture, mangakas' rights, and even mangakas' souls. Please understand once again that all of that is against the law. Also, the mangakas and Shueisha will severely deal with any unjust copies found on the internet. We ask that our readers please continue to support us.

~Weekly Shonen Jump editorial department
To much surprise, this letter actually had an impact on the scanlation scene in the west. The website, Raw Paradise has already removed their website, forwarding any visitor to Shueisha’s main page. Though this was probably not done because they felt bad for what they did, but because they were frightened by Shonen Jump’s message, since raw paradise’s scans are heavily watermarked.

I also believe this message was directed toward the Japanese fans rather than our scanlation scene, since it is with these fans that they make the most money. This is a big development in the scanalation world, but not the cure some fans have been waiting for. No matter what the industry does, scanlations will always exist. Regardless, Shonen Jump did the right thing by just asking fans to help them out rather than jumping down our throats with threats and lawyers.

Yes, Some guys at mangahelpers discuss this like the end of days, but Shueisha or any other company cannot do a thing against internet raw as long as internet copies are released after the magazine is released. They only got pissed off if some idiots got the copy and scan/release the WSJ before the magazine hit the street. For those guys, publishing company sued them.

Again, Shueisha did not do anything except giving out formal (warning ) statement.
They did this several times. problem is that no one cares except companies' employee.
And, actually the statement was aiming for Japanese readers not the international users.

I was also not happy with his warter marks. It was weird. Of course, manga group would not use the copy with water marks.

Like that's anything new... The retards over at MangaHerpes were always of limited awareness about the processes around this business. Not only their normal posters, but also their admin & mods staff... (Viz & MH coop business plan)... I don't care for crying out loud if some of them get their pants shit and leave scanlation forever... We were always nothing but pirates...

Again, Shueisha did not do anything except giving out formal (warning ) statement.
They did this several times. problem is that no one cares except companies' employee.
And, actually the statement was aiming for Japanese readers not the international users.

Yeah, only the japanese market. And they should ask themselves why they don't refrain to online selling if they are so afraid of scanning anyway...
It's questionable to blame scanlators for plunge of manga sells. There was a financial crisis just a year ago. The same argument they are using for the american comic market...

According to the newly released ICv2 White Paper on the “State of the Comics Industry,” manga sales in the U.S. and Canada suffered through a second straight year of double digit declines in 2009 with sales falling 20% from an estimated $175 million in 2008 to $140 million in 2009. This drop-off comes on the heels of a 17% decline from manga’s highpoint in 2007 when sales reached their peak of $210 million, which means that manga sales declined by a third from 2007 to 2009.

Interestingly in 2009 the drop-off in manga sales was more pronounced in the bookstore channel than it was in the direct market, with the weakest titles taking the biggest hits. The number of volumes of manga released, which hit an all-time high of 1513 in 2007 fell to 1115 in 2009 and is projected (according to ICv2’s survey of manga publishers see “Fewer Manga in 2010”) to plummet to 968 in 2010, thus mirroring the more than 33% decline manga sales since 2007. While most of the major manga publishers have simply cut back on the number of their releases, the pressure of declining sales has forced a number of mid-level publishers including Aurora, Go-Comi, and Dr. Master to inactive status.

Clearly the surfeit of manga releases, which overwhelmed the market, was part of the problem, but by no measure can it explain the severity of the decline over the past two years. The young teen shojo fans who fueled the manga boom in bookstores have aged and in spite of attempts to interest them in reading more “adult” josei manga, as they grow older these predominantly female readers appear to be abandoning manga for other reading (Twilight) and online activities. Also the TV exposure that drove major shonen hits such as Naruto, Bleach and Death Note is down considerably, which has kept hot new titles such Rosario + Vampire from achieving the kind of success that previous Shonen Jump hits have enjoyed.

Another key factor in the slowing sales of manga is the presence of so many volumes of manga in translated form on the Internet. Just as the anime market in the U.S. was gutted by fansubbed downloads available on the Net for free, manga is now facing its own crisis created by the availability of free unlicensed scanlations on the Web. Manga readers lack the “collector mentality” of comic book fans and also tend to be both young and tech savvy. The fact that manga is “long-form” entertainment, with many series running to dozens of volumes (Naruto Vol. 48 is due out in June), even taking into account the fact that manga is very attractively priced compared with traditional American graphic novels, it is very expensive to collect the entire series in paper. Increasingly retailers who saw their once strong anime sales shrink away to nothing are telling ICv2 that manga readers are sampling new series online and only buying their favorite one or two series in printed form.

Still it is important to remember that manga remains a key component of the overall graphic market. In European markets where manga boomed before it hit it big here in the States, there was a post-boom drop-off, but sales then stabilized at a substantial level. Manga continues to dominate sales of graphic novels (in units) in bookstores. In spite of a 19% drop in the number releases and 20% decline in sales, manga titles still represented 35% of all the graphic novels released in the U.S. in 2009 and accounted for 38% of sales in the category.